


threshold

by sbideyman



Category: Spider-Man - All Media Types, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Genre: (warning for graphic drug use and overdose during peter's patrolling), Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Sensory Overload, Sick Peter, Sickfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-13
Updated: 2018-10-17
Packaged: 2019-08-01 15:26:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 11,593
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16287104
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sbideyman/pseuds/sbideyman
Summary: His body eats through the single dose of Tylenol like it’s nothing but he feels bad asking Aunt May to give him more so it can at least do something. Everything still hurts, way more than it should. He wonders distantly again if he’s getting sick – which would be the last thing he needs right now – with the way his head has begun throbbing or if this is just what four broken ribs, sensory overload and one hell of a beating feels like on a body.(in which Peter patrols through sleep deprivation and injury because he can't cope without the suit's sensory protocol)





	1. too much

Three petty thefts, a bank robbery, four muggings and one close call with a six-foot-tall man and a giant – probably rabid – dog later and Peter can finally call it a night. It’s only when he’s sauntering home – completely out of web fluid and hoping nothing else comes up – that he realises the sky has already mottled dark above him as he asks Karen to tell him the time.

“It is currently 1.46am,” she recites, and Peter has to remind himself that she (probably) isn’t programmed to lecture him even though it sure as hell sounds like she’s about to. “I must also remind you that your wake-up alarm is set for 6.15am and I predict that you will only receive around four hours of sleep.”

“Uh Karen there isn’t some ‘Appease Aunt May’ program built into this suit is there?” he quips. “She’s going to kill me for patrolling this late on a school night.”

He’s tired but it’s a good kind of tired. His muscles ache with over-use.

He sneaks in once he arrives home with the kind of stealth he usually reserves for taking down criminals, happy to find that May is sleeping soundly. He’ll tell her he was only out until eleven when morning breaks even if it’s likely she won’t believe him. He slips out of the suit and into pyjamas and it’s only once he’s tucked himself into bed that he begins to miss it.

Everything’s louder again. Everything’s dialled up way past eleven these days, as if all of his senses have been turned up to full blast. He can be in class and swear that he heard something happening halfway across town, the odd feeling that something bad was happening settling deep down in his bones. Spidey-senses, he guesses. They must be coming into their own. In the suit, he can ask Karen to focus sensory input and he’s been putting in so many hours as friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man that he forgets what he can do as just plain old Peter Parker. Rain thuds against his window, New York’s late-night traffic buzzes with the slow whining shriek of taxis turning corners and doors slamming and cars backfiring and he wishes it would all just stop to let him rest, just for a moment.

It’s still dark for another hour, but as it sneaks towards four the sun is beginning to rise and he can’t submerge himself into nothingness and at least try to force sleep. He sees the mess of papers on his desk and remembers he has two tests that he’s just barely studied for approaching. Anxiety settles in the pit of his stomach; if only his enhanced healing covered overloading on cortisol. It’s going to be a long day.

He must fall asleep at some point, somehow, despite all the odds because he wakes up to May standing in the door-frame knowing distantly that something woke him up but not coherent enough to know what. Light blares into his eyes and he has to fight the urge to close them again to properly read Aunt May’s expression, even though it makes his head hurt. Does she know how late he was out last night?

“Petey?” she calls, voice slow and comforting; he settles once he determines that she seems to not be aware of his late-night escapades. “Come on, time for school kiddo. You’ve slept in.”

“Time’s it?” he croaks, pushing himself up and wincing at the creak of his bed as he does so.

“Nearly seven. You’ll probably miss the subway, but I can drive you on my way to work and you can eat breakfast in the car. We could get bagels?”

“You don’t have to, I could do with a run.”

“It’s all fine,” she smiles and he curses himself; he doesn’t deserve her and guilt settles in his stomach something akin to nausea. “Twenty minutes. Try and wear something sorta clean.”

He eases himself up and obeys, searching out a fresh shirt and a pair of jeans. He’s doomed for the English test first period and can’t really do much to prepare so he gathers the explosion of papers from his desk and shoves them into the pit of his backpack. At a push, maybe Ned will be able to give him a few pointers before his inevitable academic demise, but it’s only going to get him so far considering he hasn’t even finished the book. Teeth brushed and worry only partly stilled he makes his way downstairs and announces he’s ready.

He’s quiet on the drive there, and just as aware of it as Aunt May is. She asks a couple of times if he’s okay and he brushes it off as nerves about the test. She’s onto him. She must be. She keeps glancing at him out the side of her eye. He’s just going to have to admit it.

“Sorry I was out late last night,” he mumbles sheepishly. “Sorta lost track of time.”

She smirks. God she’s good. Way to guilt him into a confession; silence works wonders. She’s really good.

“Yeah that’s an understatement,” she reaches out to ruffle his hair as they sit at the red light; a few seconds pass by shrouded in awkwardness. “You okay for school Mr. Too Busy Being Spider Boy For Sleep? You’re looking peaky. I can call you in sick?”

“Mmm,” he nods. “I’ll sleep in advanced calc.”

“You will not.”

“Fine then. Lunch and PE.”

“Deal. Just take it easy.”

“Easy peasy lemon squeezy,” he beams a smile at her, mostly just to convince her that he really is fine. “I’m with Mr Stark after school, but I think he’s in a meeting for a bit once I get there. I’ll try and squeeze in some shut-eye there before tonight’s patrol.”

May’s lips fold tight with the suppression of what she really wants to say. Peter climbs out of the car as quickly as he can, waving and mouthing that Ned is just up ahead waiting for him before he starts running for the school gates. May can only sit there, words hanging on her tongue.

“Hey dude, I was thinking last night,” Ned’s hand is suddenly on Peter’s shoulder and it makes him jump so hard that he thinks he might have died and come back to life. “Spider-Man’s like your fursona, right?”

He takes a second to regain his composure before responding. He’s just happy to be here with Ned, without the eyes of judgement laid upon him. He can be normal, if just for a while. He doesn’t have to face Aunt May’s wrath; if wrath was deep guilt-forcing concern that he doesn’t deserve.

“First, why?” he raises an eyebrow. “And second, can you call it a fursona if spiders aren’t furry?”

“I mean… some spiders are furry though.”

“So you’re calling me a furry?”

A sound from behind Peter makes his skin crawl again, crawling through him like he’s about to explode, but it’s just MJ. He settles.

“Parker’s a furry?” she laughs when she notices she spooked him. “So that’s why you keep missing decathlon meets… must have clashed with a convention.”

She runs off before he can protest, leaving Ned laughing and Peter just sort of standing there, too sleep deprived to fully process what just happened.

He fills Ned in on all of the juicy details of last night’s vigilante escapades, the story fleshed out with Ned’s excited exclamations of ‘so did you taser-web the guy?’ and ‘but did you land that flip?’ and a tangent about how if Peter got bit by the dog would he develop Spider-Dog powers. He realises how truly exhausted he is once he’s covered everything, yawning into the back of his hand.

“Oh yeah,” he laughs. “And I didn’t get home until two. Haven’t slept a wink.”

“You’re going to die today dude,” Ned shakes his head, giving peter a consolatory pat on the back. “Do you want to peek at my Great Gatsby notes before first period?”

“I thought you’d never ask.”

The test goes about as well as Peter expected. He manages a few pages worth of an essay. Something something green light something something money something something Gatsby and Daisy. He’ll be lucky if he scrapes a C. Ned sends him a thumbs up as their papers are gathered but Peter only sends him a half-hearted smile back. The class erupts in sound as they wait for the bell. Pen clicks sound like gunshots. The teacher’s computer crashes with a magnificently loud error message that makes Peter feel like he’s dying. Spidey-senses are great and all when you’re scaling the tallest buildings of New York locating criminals or dodging an attack, but senses dialled way past eleven aren’t designed for normal teenage life. Voices pound his ear drum, so loud and close and intense that he can’t even make out words. If only he could pull the mask over his head, ask Karen to mute all sensory input and descend into a deep deep sleep.

He’s good at pretending he’s calm. He’s good at wearing a mask. He’s good at keeping secrets. This is just another one of those things he’s got to keep on the down low.

Except, that doesn’t explain why he won’t confide in Ned or May or heck, Mr Stark. He isn’t sure why. He guesses it’s because he wants to be trusted. He doesn’t want to feel like a kid. Rocking up to Tony and whining about how his Spidey-Super-Powers are causing trouble like ‘uh hey, I think I’ve got some power enhancements going on and I’m being a little baby about it can you help?’. Yeah, no thanks.

And so he does what he always does. He perseveres. He copes. He pretends to be completely normal completely sane completely put together normal human being Peter Parker.

School is a noisy blur of revision and chemistry experiments and decathlon practice. He doesn’t manage anywhere near forty winks outside of a quick snooze at the lunch table, before Flash crashed their table. Wow, he didn’t know his head could hurt this much. Pain cements itself in his temple, tendrils of discomfort growing into his sinuses and the bridge of his nose. God, his eyes feel like they’re going to fall out of his skull.

Quiet only descends upon Peter once he’s climbing into the back of Happy’s car. Bless this man for not engaging in small talk. Happy himself blesses the fact that for once, Peter isn’t chatting away like usual, although he has to admit that there is something unnerving about it. He wonders for a moment if he should buzz Stark and express his concern that the kid’s been replaced by an imposter but a quick peek in his rear-view mirror reveals that he’s not dealing with a doppelganger, just a sleep-deprived and overworked and probably dehydrated kid who looks like he needs a tub of advil and about a week’s worth of sleep.

“Tony’s still in his meeting,” he turns quietly as they approach the next intersection. “You hungry?”

Peter’s stomach rumbles in response. He’d sacrificed food for sleep at lunch, but he feels silly asking Happy to stop for something so he just shrugs. Happy stops by a fast food restaurant anyway with the excuse that Tony asked him to fetch something. A burger, some chicken nuggets and a large diet coke later and the kid’s back to looking like a human being. Good, Happy nods, I’m at least delivering a partly intact Spiderling to the boss.

Peter thanks him awkwardly as he wipes the remnants of sauce from his lip. Tony sets him to work on looking over proposed improvements for the web fluid formula, and he settles into the work.

“I think if we purify it a little earlier we can increase the yield,” Tony taps at the paper. “My equipment’s a little better than the stuff you were using at school… A lot better.”

He starts the process for a new batch to be made over the next few hours before turning his attention to yesterday’s. Heated through and cooled, he takes some pointers from Tony’s notes. It’s as he’s finally finished that tiredness hits again in full force. The rattle of the magnetic stirrer hitting the side of the pyrex beaker drills deep inside his skull. The mixture finally thickens, going viscous before the texture fully begins to expand. That’s sort of what his brain feels like. God, kid get you’re act together. He’s got to get out. When did that feeling take over? The overwhelming urge to run, to hide, to find somewhere quiet and still and empty empty empty. When are his senses ever going to need to be this heightened? This doesn’t feel useful at all. He’s pretty much useless like this. He could ask Tony for water or an advil or heck, to bail a little earlier today but pride. Goddamn motherfucking pride. Spider-Man’s gotta grin and bear it. He keeps on working.

“Hey kid?”

There’s a hand waving in front of his face and three knocks of a fist against the table. The world feels like it’s shattering as he blinks once, twice, three times to see Tony staring back at him.

Did he fall asleep? Fuck, he did. Time to spider-crawl into a spidey-hole and die a slow spidey-death of spidey-embarrassment. Come on, kid, think up a witty response before you meet the Iron-judgement from the Iron-eye of Iron-Man. But instead, Tony just looks at him with an expression he can’t read.

“Uh, how long was I out?” he blinks; no witty response comes to mind. “Long day, Mr Stark, I’m sorry.”

“Hour, tops,” Tony shrugs; Peter can’t really read if he’s angry but guilt rises nonetheless. “And you don’t have to be sorry. Go home, kid.”

“But…”

“I have uh… A thing to do. A very important thing that you can’t be here for. Go. Please.”

He obliges, mostly out of embarrassment. He wishes the world would just swallow him whole. Except he doesn’t go home. It’s sneaking towards five when his senses alert him to something a mile or so away and before he can even think about it he’s ducking into an alley to change into his suit.

“Welcome back Peter,” Karen pipes up. “I’m engaging GPS for your destination.”

His vision becomes more focused as a pin-point is placed ahead of him. Potential web targets mark his route. The fatigue eases a little from his bones with the momentum of his swing and everything begins to make sense again. He can concentrate. God, this feels too good.

“I’d suggest you capture the first man with a stealth attack,” Karen advises. “I can map out a potential route.”

“Hit it Karen,” he takes the first guy out with a web, completely silent; the other two don’t even notice he’s down. “And contact the police whilst you’re at it.”

The suit provides haptic feedback to notify him that the police are in transit and the route directs him to surprise the men.

“Shiny, shiny huh?” he’s suddenly behind the two men, both about double the size of him and a million times more intimidating. “Did nobody tell you stealing is bad?”

The men just laugh, placing some sort of device on the window of the jewellery shop. The glass shatters in a perfect circle. God, he thought he’d gotten rid of all the fancy alien technology at ground level in New York. Peter shoots a web and captures the bigger man’s hand before he can grab anything before quickly slamming the other against the wall with another. Sirens blare.

“You’re making this too easy for me,” he walks back a few steps and turns back with charming salute, illuminated by the red and blue of the approaching police cars. “Got them tied up for you boys, no need to thank me. Or do. I like validation. Please validate me.”

He’s into the next chase before he can even catch his breath. He sets his sights on a car up ahead zipping through traffic Mario Kart style and Karen blocks out everything except a direct route. There are two hostages in the back of the vehicle and their screaming is so loud that Karen has to mute auditory input. Once he’s close enough, a carefully shot web manages to bring the car to a halt but only just for a second. The car picks up speed, drifting around a corner and only narrowly missing a swarm of pedestrians.

Okay, being dragged on the back of a car going shit loads of miles per hour? Not so fun. He shifts so he’s standing jet-ski-style, his heels dragging on the ground. Come on physics, he calls, be on my side for once. He can only exert enough force to slow it down before it shoots off again and caught slightly of guard he slams into the ground with the world’s most elegant belly flop. Yep, that’s definitely a broken rib. Maybe two. Definitely no more than three. Pain sears through his chest but the adrenaline provides him with enough momentum to provide one last yank on the web, sending the car front-first into a lamp post. He pulls the back doors open and the hostages run out, sourcing a nearby security guard. Phew. The man’s concussed in the front seat and all Peter can do is web him to the steering wheel and rope the car around the post for the police.

“Peter, I am detecting four rib fractures,” Karen chimes in with what he definitely already knew as he walks away, winded and exhaustion creeping back up on him. “You should take it slow until you heal. It appears there is a seventy percent risk you will sustain a pneumothorax of your right lung.”

His spidey-senses are decidedly not tingling so he reckons he could squeeze in a dinner break. He sources a quiet residential street with a quaint little family bodega before taking perch on the fire escape with a soda and enough snacks to feed an army; or just a hungry spider-enhanced teen with a super-metabolism. He lets the spider drone hover above the city, just a little further out from where he sits.

The pain in his chest isn’t easing. Karen keeps alerting him to his physical distress – his temperature is a bit high, his heart’s running fast and his blood sugar low – but he doesn’t need fancy readings to know he feels like shit. He isn’t sure if it’s because he’s hurt or if he’s getting sick, especially with how out of the normal range the readings Karen is giving him are. That happens sometimes when his body’s forced to heal quickly; his immune system’s sent into overdrive and everything goes a little haywire trying to mend things. He yawns, trying to stay awake. And then a new alert; something about drugs and a fight kicking off. Fuck, he exclaims but he’s already off, swinging towards the perpetrators forgetting the pain he was in just a moment ago. After a messy brutal fight he manages to break apart the drug deal and the guys get away and just as he’s about to dart after them he hears a screeching achy retch behind him and his stomach turns. The guys are well out of sight and even as Karen scans the area, he realises he’s lost them except he’s more focused on the contorted body behind him and the heaving horrible sounds coming from him. God, that’s the worst sound he’s ever heard. Something deep and primal inside him tells him that this is the sound of death.

“Shit what’s happening to him Karen?” he chokes out, running his eyes across the area; there’s a needle and a discarded ball of foil.

“His symptoms suggest an opioid overdose, although my assessment of the substance detects that it was cut with something else,” she states matter-of-factly; god, he wishes he could be as calm as a robot-AI-thing right now. “I am contacting the emergency services.”

The man’s only a few year’s older than him. Fuck. Fuck… He’s never seen something like this. Not this close. He’s only just breathing. Peter wants to tear out his own lungs from the sound; the low hissy whine, the barely-there signs of life. For once he wishes it was louder, but the streets are empty and roads are shut and there’s nothing, nobody; just him, his suit and an unconscious man overdosing on heroin. Friendly neighbourhood Spider-Manning just got super fucking real.

“Karen, what can I do?” he’s nearly screaming, hoping someone will hear him. They’re in a quiet part of town; deep and dingy and hard to place. “I don’t know what to do.”

“Administering naloxone will reverse the overdose,” she states.

“Well that’d be great if we had any on hand,” he’s hesitant as he takes the man’s pulse, hovering over the man and close to tears. “It’s slow but there.”

Two ambulances arrive. He sits and watches from the side-lines, the pain in his chest spreading; he’s should be healing little by little now, but he’s so anxious that catching his breath is difficult. He doesn’t want to leave, especially when the man is brought back to life and wants him there, wants someone – anyone – there for him. Friendly-neighbourhood-Spider-Man does his duty and stays there, shaking. Karen doesn’t even need to be asked to reduce sensory input as he perches against a wall to catch his breath. The ambulance lights are dimmed, the EMT’s voices lowered and it’s still too much as he watches one of the ambulances drive off, hopefully to take the man to safety. There’s blood seeping through his mask from the fight. He’s crying before he can stop himself.

“You did good,” the female EMT smiles up at him and all he can do is send her a thumbs up; at least she can’t see him sobbing through the mask. “It’d give me piece of mind if you let me check you over, huh?”

He’s about to protest before there’s a blanket around his shoulders and he’s being ushered inside the ambulance. The second EMT makes a Spider-Man joke Peter doesn’t quite catch. He rolls the mask off and passes it between his hands as he squints, trying to cope with the bright lights above him. EMTs must see everything, so he risks them seeing his secret identity.

“He’s just a kid,” the female EMT is stopped in her tracks. “I thought Spider-Man would be like thirty but you’re what?”

“Sixteen,” he mumbles; he didn’t realise he was still crying until he spoke.

“Oh kiddo,” she lulls. “Let me clean up that cut on your head, and you can go. Is there someone I can call to pick you up?”

“I can make my own way,” he smiles, letting her wipe up the wound and place a dressing over it even though it’ll probably heal by the morning. “Sorry.”

“You did really great. Really really great.”

He’s losing the energy for conversation now. He just wants to go home and wrap himself under his covers and get away from the world for a few hours. The EMT lets him go, and he slides his mask back on. Karen lowers auditory input to a minimum. He takes a bit of a detour on the way home, a scenic route if you will. The silence surrounds him as the physical sensation of the wind propels his body forward through a series of buildings. Once he’s finally home, he’s too comfortable with the silence to take the suit off. He slips through the window and climbs onto the top bunk, burrowing his legs under the cover. Tears really do flow now. God, sobbing is really hurting his ribs. At least the suit is muting the sound of himself crying. He doesn’t cry. Not like this. This is just… weird and wrong and bad and he doesn’t know what to do.

“Calling Aunt May,” Karen initiates, her voice low.

“No…” but the call has already been answered.

“Peter?” May’s voice is soft and slow and comforting. “Are you home?”

“M-May,” he manages. “Can you c-come here?”

She’s at his door before he can say another word. He stares back at her, wide-eyed underneath the mask.

“You gonna sleep in that suit, huh?” she smiles kindly, searching out pyjamas for him; he shakes his head. “Bad night?”

He tells her what he witnessed, and she climbs up to join him, wishing she could ruffle his hair but he refuses to take off the mask. She settles for kissing his forehead. She can feel the sobs racking through his body. She hasn’t seen him this upset since Ben died.

“I’m so proud of you,” she whispers.

“S’time?” he snuggles into her shoulder.

“Eight, but you could do with an early night,” she points to the pyjamas. “Come on, you’ll stink up the suit.”

He pulls off the mask, his face red and puffy underneath. May just wants to whisk him up and protect him from harm’s way but there’s nothing she can really do. He lets out a slow laboured sigh as if he’s in pain but May doesn’t press it, even though she wants to ask a million questions. At least he’s stopped crying so hard.

“Are you hurt?” she asks him gently.

“My head just hurts I’m ok,” he mumbles.

“You get into your pyjamas and I’ll fetch you a Tylenol huh?” she eases herself off the top bunk; god he feels like such a kid. “You should take a sick day tomorrow, bud. It sounds like you’ve had the worst day.”

“Can’t,” he shakes his head, happy that tears don’t threaten to fall. “Chemistry test and I think the decathlon team will kill me if I miss tomorrow’s match. I’m okay May just… shaken up.”

He’s hesitant to take off the suit but the light’s off and the street is strangely quiet, so it’s not so bad. Maybe even comfier without the tightness around his bones. He shifts himself properly into bed, burying his face into the pillow as he waits. Everything hurts.

His body eats through the single dose of Tylenol like it’s nothing but he feels bad asking Aunt May to give him more so it can at least do something. Everything still hurts, way more than it should. He wonders distantly again if he’s getting sick – which would be the last thing he needs right now – with the way his head has begun throbbing or if this is just what four broken ribs, sensory overload and one hell of a beating feels like on a body.

Sleep comes easier than he thought it would but ends earlier than expected too. Four am and he’s hanging in limbo, not entirely sure if he’s awake but definitely positively super sure that his temperature is way too high to be healthy. Consciousness just barely clings on as he eases himself up to sit. He takes a shaky breath. Nothing feels real. Bless Aunt May he whispers when he discovers the Tylenol bottle left at the foot of his bed. He swallows them dry and they cling to his throat. Everything is fuzzy, like the world is churning and all he can do is sit and watch. He’s all too aware of his own body and the way it tingles, the way pain shoots up through his body, the horrible itch in his windpipe making him force out a cough. He sways and sees stars until the pain settles. He hasn’t actually broken a bone since the bite so he’s not sure how fast his ribs should heal, but they hurt so bad that he’s not sure that it feels right. What was it Karen said about a pneumothorax? He takes one long deep breath and determines he’s okay. Just the broken ribs and the fever, probably a side effect from the healing.

He plays with the idea of shoving on the suit for a full diagnostic scan just to be sure but settles for just the mask to check his temperature. He runs hot on a good day so the reading of 103 isn’t as scary as it’d be for a normal kid, but it’s high, even for him. He rips the mask off before Karen has a chance to lecture him. Sleep doesn’t come again so he settles for looking over his chemistry notes with the light as low as it can be without it being complete darkness. In theory, the test should be a breeze. He can write electronic configurations in his sleep, whiz through balancing equations like a chemistry Dumbledore and organic chemistry is where he shines but this morning, nothing is making sense. He stares at the question – _describe how nucleophilic substitution reactions are involved in the preparation of chemicals –_ and it might as well be in Latin because the words are contorting into a jumble of shapes. Nothing is going into his brain, if there’s even a brain left with the way it feels like it's boiling away to nothing. He closes his eyes, but all he can see is that man again and the guttural death rattle from deep inside him.


	2. liquid magic

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> peter tries 2 iron man himself back 2 full health lol

Aunt May comes to wake him somewhere around half six, finding him sat up with a pen in his mouth and papers strewn across his bed. This kid, she thinks. She takes in his appearance – flushed cheeks, red eyes, lips chewed to shreds – and wishes she could wrap him up in cotton wool and hide him away from all the bad in the world. She loves him so much.

“You okay?” she leans against the bars of his bed, making direct eye contact with the bleary-eyed boy.

“Stop worrying May,” he meets her gaze; his voice is absolutely shot. “M’fine, promise.”

She wants to feel his forehead, he can tell, but she doesn’t even try. There’s freshly made French toast and orange juice and May’s driving him to school. Somehow this is agreed upon without discussion and so he’s sat in the car, able to look over his notes instead of crushed under the weight of sensory input on the train. He really really really doesn’t deserve her. He gets a text on the way there from Tony.

_Consider yourself free tonight. Stuck in boring business meetings all day please feel bad for me._

Maybe there is some form of mercy in the world. He stifles a cough, partly because he doesn’t want May to catch onto him but mostly because it hurts his ribs. He really should’ve stocked up on Tylenol before they left. And maybe picked up a pack of tissues. Or heck, just shouldn’t have left the house.

“I can take lunch early and pick you up after your test?” May doesn’t look away from the road as she says this. “You look…”

“Like I got bit by a spider?” he smirks, although it takes up a good chunk of his energy to do so. “It’s last period and I have decathlon most of the day. And I’m fine.”

“Hm,” ah yes, May’s old trick, the silent treatment. “See you after school then Petey.”

He is fine. Truly fine. So fine he… doesn’t want to leave the car. So fine he nearly turns back once he finally does because he can barely even walk. He manages a wave and tries to stand up vaguely straight as he watches the car drive off.

Yeah, so not fine.

“I can’t tell if you look like literal puke or if you look as if you’re about to puke,” MJ leans against the school gate, her decathlon jacket slung over her shoulder. “Both? I think both. As long as you pick on the test presenter guy, I’m down.”

“I was just up late,” he sniffs and tries to regain some composure. “Had to study.”

“Sleep is for the weak huh? Just don’t die on us Pete.”

“I’ll try.”

He nods, barely even sure what’s going on now. Even though MJ teases, there are tiny little signs that prove she cares… sort of cares… okay, maybe just prove she has a smidgen of human emotions towards Peter. She searches her bag for a packet of tissues as they enter the school but of course there’s a catch.

“I have Spiderman or Frozen ones,” she procures the two packets. “Take your pick.”

When they reach Ned at his locker, he saves the teasing and instead resolves on glances of worry. He’s not going to ask how Peter is, guessing it’s something Spider-Man related and too protective of his friend’s cover to broach the topic. That, and they just don’t talk about these things, even though they really fucking should. He stumbles to collect his flashcards for decathlon revision before they’re on their way to the assembly hall to await the match. They have a match against another local school this morning and although Peter doesn’t really feel so enthused about it, he supposes it beats sitting in class and trying not to die.

Now that he thinks about it he feels like he’s definitely positively absolutely going to die. The pain is spreading, climbing through his chest and he can’t stifle his coughs anymore, even though it hurts so bad as he tries to muffle the sound in the crook of his elbow. It’s a nasty cough too; all thick and deep and angry. This really doesn’t feel right. Worry rises in his stomach. Pride keeps him upright as Flash and the others join them.

“Hey Pete?” Ned meets his gaze, but doesn’t press what he really wanted to ask. “You ready for the chem test?”

“Uh yeah,” he rubs at the back of his neck. “Think so.”

He flicks through Ned’s flashcards in silence. He could just bail. He could excuse himself to Mr Harrington and make the walk of shame down to the nurse’s office and take residence in a quiet cot and skip yet another decathlon event but obsessive thoughts swirl in his head. If the nurse takes his temperature, she’ll have him in the back of an ambulance on the way to the emergency room where inevitably the doctors would discover he’s not a typical teenage boy but instead, this spider-contaminated, genetically enhanced super-hero thing and then he’s definitely going to be captured and put into some test facility and used as a military weapon and…. Yeah, his fever’s definitely climbing. Doctors are a no. There’s also the way Flash keeps eying him, clearly hoping that Parker will keel over or puke or drop dead (or hopefully all three) to get the chance to take his place on the team. Yeah, sounds appealing but no fucking way. He’s proving to the team he can do this, that he’s not useless and flaky and unable to commit to anything apart from being a massive socially awkward nerd. He faked sick to get out of the last decathlon meet across town because Stark had him on a mission; he can’t bail again. He really really can’t.

Silence, or as close to silence as Peter will ever experience. There are still the clicks of pens and the scratching of paper and people breathing. God, he hates the sound of people breathing… Or maybe just the sound of Flash breathing, he’s not so sure. Oh, and there’s his coughing slowly becoming more obvious amidst the quiet lull. If only he had Karen here to mute the sound for him.

“Are we all just going to ignore the fact that Peter’s sitting there rotting with the plague?” Flash snaps; his voice rips apart Peter’s eardrums. “Dude, you sound like you’re about to cough up a lung. Go home, Parker. You look like you’re about to die.”

(It feels it too.)

“S’just allergies,” he sniffs for effect. “Good old non-contagious annoying allergies, Flash. Forgot my morning inhaler.”

This explanation appeases Flash for now, but doesn’t seem to convince Ned. Peter hasn’t had allergies since the bite, his asthmatic childhood a thing of the past. But then again, Peter hadn’t been sick since the bite either as far as he was aware, and that sure as hell looks to be what is happening right now or maybe he’s just hurt. God, get your act together Ned, convince your stubborn friend to give it up an admit that he’s not well.

“Dude, I can go fetch your inhaler from your locker if you want?” Ned eventually suggests, except there probably isn’t even an inhaler in Peter’s locker anymore.

“Come on, I could do with a walk,” Peter’s up as fast as his body can manage.

He’s winded by the time they’re outside, happy to be away from the watchful eyes of the rest of the team.

“Go home Pete,” Ned watches as Peter sits down against the locker, wheezing a little. “You’re hurt aren’t you?”

“Few broken ribs from patrol last night,” he flashes a wry smile. “They’re still healing. I’m all good.”

“Yeah, well you look like you’re dying.”

“Eh… Feel it too. Should pass by the start of the match though. My immune system’s sort of in overdrive because of the healing. Please, Ned. I’m fine.”

So. Not. Fine. But he pushes himself to stand up anyway. They hang around outside before they can’t anymore and they’re ushered up to the tables. There’s a meagre audience in front of them; a couple of kids using it as an opportunity to get out of class, teachers using this as a makeshift teacher’s lounge and a few wide-eyed parents. God, he wishes Aunt May were here. He should’ve bailed whilst he had the chance. The questions aren’t so bad in the first round at least. Some geography, some biology; lots of stuff he knows. They’re against some private school, so they’re basically doomed from the start but they are at least putting up a good fight.

Then he messes up a question he should know about the forces at work in a rope swing. This is stuff he should know. This is Spider-Man stuff for Christ’s sake. He lives and breathes this physics every day of his life. Maybe it is time to call it a day because if he doesn’t die from this cold-virus-super-spidey-immune-system-from-hell thing he’s sure as hell going to be taken by the embarrassment first. His fever’s definitely spiking again; was he shivering this much before? Come on, steel yourself, kid. Spider-Man the fuck out of this funk and don’t cry in front of all these people. Don’t you dare. The one blessing is that they’re here at school, instead of on a field trip to go somewhere unfamiliar. He’d definitely have bailed by now if that had been so. He closes his eyes, imagining the tilt of the school bus and has to take a moment as nausea bubbles inside him.

Meltdown averted, he lets the others take the helm and pushes his yellow sleeves up, feeling clammy all of a sudden. MJ answers a succession of maths questions but it’s not enough against the power that is the rich kids that sit on the table across from them. Flash sends him evils from the front row, but his glare is the least of Peter’s problems. Suppressing his coughs throughout the competition and the succeeding processions of congratulations proves to be a mistake as he erupts in a coughing fit. Yep, that’s definitely stars he’s seeing. He’d keel over if Ned wasn’t holding his shoulder.

Is this worse than after the spider bite? He didn’t think anything could quite match that. At least it had been flu season then so May took his excuses without protest and most of the other kids were out of school too. No, nothing could quite match that, except this definitely comes close. Super fucking close.

May texts him at lunch to ask if it’s okay if she takes on some extra hours tonight. Guilt burns deep inside as he momentarily considers asking if she can come pick him up early. They could do with the extra money. He can’t do that to her. No fucking way.

The only blessing is that Flash avoids their table at lunch. He rests his warm head on his chemistry textbook, nibbling at his sandwich and waiting for death.

“You should go home,” MJ says, completely deadpan.

“I should do a lot of things,” he lifts his head just for a moment, mouth agape and eyes just barely open. “Like study for this test.”

She shows him her sketchbook. There’s an illustration of him with exaggerated dark circles under his eyes and little blobs surrounding his head.

“They’re germs,” she points to them, then back at him. “Accurate, isn’t it?”

The chemistry test that afternoon is only mildly less resembling hell than the decathlon. He’s feeling a little more human again in the cool classroom and with the Advil MJ sourced for him at lunch but he hates that he keeps causing a disturbance with every cough he forces out. Stress overwhelms him and gives him some relief from the pain and he’s glad once he’s finally free.

He should in theory go home, stock up on chicken soup and maybe sleep for a few years but of course, he has to mindlessly check the Spider-Man tag on twitter. Drug store at gun point not too far away. Before he can even think about it he’s tightening the suit and swinging his way there.

“I am detecting that you are dehydrated Peter,” Karen chimes as he eases the door open; goddamn AI always with the concern. “I recommend you consume at least 1 litre of water within the next hour.”

“What’s a Spider-Man gotta do to get a drink of ice cold H2O around here?” he webs the gun with one hand and swings open a fridge on the corner of the store with the other, encasing a bottle of water in a web and flipping it to the cashier desk. “Police are on their way buddy. Oh and uh, drop the money pal. And the rest of it. And whatever is in your back pocket? Ooh Reese’s Pieces, good choice.”

He throws a packet of them onto the desk beside his water. The guy tries to run, but Peter webs him to the window outside.

“Ey, Spider-Guy,” the cashier beams. “Thanks dude. Consider this on the house.”

“Any DayQuil?” he leans on the counter, catching his breath with a laboured sniff.

“Tell you what…” the guy searches around the cold and flu section and nabs a green and blue bottle half the price of the brand stuff. “This stuff? Liquid magic. You’ll feel like a Superhero…. Oh.”

“Yeah kind of already there dude,” he throws his arms in the air, obviously smiling behind the mask. “Although, kinda not feeling so super right now.”

“Yeah well, you’ll be feeling like a Superhero again in no time.”

The guy refuses to take Peter’s ten dollars, and again, he’s left feeling like he’s shrouded in kindness he definitely doesn’t deserve. ‘Liquid magic’ turns out to be cherry flavoured. He swallows a good glug of the nasty liquid, washing it down with the water Karen basically guilted him into getting. Okay, so maybe he was a little dehydrated. Just a little. The meds slowly work their way into his system. Oh yeah, definitely liquid magic. His body isn’t eating through it; it’s actually working. He feels… good? Yeah, he guesses he’ll go for good. Good enough to go chasing the next crime anyway. He perches on the highest building, tuning into the NYPD internal station waiting for something, anything to pop up.

It’s only when he gets to central park and is sneaking up on a mugger that it clicks; he’s high. Super fucking mega high. The cherry gloop definitely has magical powers. He can feel new super powers starting to form. Laser eyes? Laser eyes sound good. Oh, and super speed. Invisibility sounds over-rated…. The only real new super power he develops from the concoction is being unable to shut his mouth, but the jury’s out on whether that was a power he already possessed before his consumption of this mystical decongesting, fever-reducing, pain-killing juice. Oh, and maybe being able to deal with sensory input. That’s a new one. God, he’d normally be wanting to crawl into a hole and die in a place as busy as this, but he’s thriving. Swinging through the trees makes such a good whooshing sound. Trees? Yeah. Trees are cool. He wants more more more.

It’s mostly little jobs tonight; friendly-neighbourhood Spider-Man duties. He helps a kid walk his abouela home with her groceries and she promises him a bowl of her famous tomato rice soup to sweat the cold from him but he’s onto the next job too fast to follow through. He swings his way through rescuing some stray dogs, breaking up some teenagers fighting and narrowly stopping a car crash feeling better than he’s ever felt. God, even coughing feels good. Like his body is… doing something? Like he’s getting the icky stuff out. He gets caught up in a train of thought that somehow ends with him empathising with viruses – they only want to cling on and find a friend! – before he’s seeking out more more more more. He helps someone carry a new couch into their apartment, chases away a heckler from a busker, stops a little kid’s bullies, catches a shoplifter, helps a girl pick up her dropped homework… He forgets the pain in his chest and the fuzziness of his head and just keeps working. The company that make that magic cherry stuff should sponsor him. He can imagine the commercial. Sparkly Spider-Man costume…. Green screen in some rainbows and stars and puppies… yeah puppies sound real good. Oh and Captain America. Can’t have a cold medicine Spider-Man commercial without Captain America.

It starts getting too much around seven. The liquid magic is still going strong except he’s descending into a new stage of its power. Drowsiness takes over his bones and he starts getting clumsy. He passes off missing a punch as intentional as he stops the next of the day’s criminals but he walks away a little bruised. Pain again. Pain in every inch of his body. Music blares from a nearby house. It drills deep into his skull. Some kid from his school probably having a house party. It’s a Friday. They must be. His hypothesis is confirmed when he sees Flash standing awkwardly and trying to be cool and some guy hanging around outside. Cigarette smoke and thumping bass and strobing lights. It only seems to get louder. He can’t risk moving from his current spot or else he’ll be seen. He’d have to be nice to Flash, keep up the friendly Spider-Man appearance with a mock-voice to match. He’d have fun with this if he wasn’t feverish and uncomfortably high on off-brand DayQuil. If only.

“Karen,” he whispers, his voice beginning to go after a day of witty quips and chasing bad guys. “Lower the auditory threshold.”

“I have calculated a set of parameters of sensory input for your optimum comfort Peter,” she says. “Would you like to implement this sensory protocol?”

“Give it a trial run, I guess.”

“I am detecting that you are tachycardic, Peter. I recommend slowing down until you have returned to your resting heart rate.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah Karen, I’m working on it.”

It’s as if the world is muted and he’s wearing sunglasses. He can still make out everything, he just isn’t overwhelmed anymore. If only he could have this sensory protocol in place all the time. Maybe then he wouldn’t be such a wreck.

He doesn’t want to go home but he guesses he should. Aunt May will be home soon, and he doesn’t want her to know he’s been patrolling for this long. Or to know he’s this sick. Or this high on cold medicine. Yeah, fuck. There are a lot of things he doesn’t want her to know. He wishes he could keep the suit on, but that’ll just blow his cover.

He’s in his comfiest sweats and watching Ferris Beuller – who is very right, life does move pretty fast, too damn fast for Peter’s liking - under a blanket mountain on the couch when Aunt May comes home.

“You should take a leaf out of his book,” Aunt May strokes a hand through his hair and points to the television; he reaches a limp hand out to acknowledge her presence. “And take something for that fever. You’re really warm.”

“Way ahead of you,” he points to the off-brand DayQuil on the coffee table with his foot.

“No spider-manning this weekend, eh?” she smiles kindly. “It’d put my mind at ease.”

“But May-…” he tries to protest but a thick cough rattles his chest; she bites her lip but damn, that sounds nasty.

“I’m locking you in this apartment until you’re not hacking up a lung,” she glares at him; yeah, she’s definitely being serious.

“Supposed to meet Mr Stark tomorrow,” he mumbles, the cough only just settling. “And he said Ned could come tomorrow, I can’t let him down.”

“No,” she stares at him, but there’s not even a smidge of spite in the way she says it. “You need to rest.”

“You know, he’ll probably have fancy rich man medical stuff that’ll Captain America me back to full health. He sets up an IV for himself when he gets a hangover.”

“Did you just use Captain America as a verb?” she raises an eyebrow, smirking before ruffling her hand through his hair again.

“I’m sick leave me alone,” he pouts, tilting his head back to make eye contact with her.

“Hey, let me make a compromise considering you actually admitted something. If you let me take you to a doctor Ned can come over, and we’ll see about your meeting with Mr Stark. And also no Spider-Man business.”

“No-can-do May. One drop of my blood and they’ll have me in Oscorp’s lab, slicing me open and stealing my spidey-organs… or just locked up and tested on.”

“Think that only happens in comic books kiddo,” she smiles.

“Stark’s the best bet, trust me. The suit sends readings of my vitals to him, and one of his fancy artificial intelligence things can tell me I just have the good ol’ common cold,” he smiles back. “I’m okay, May. Promise. Just need to sleep it off.”

She lets him go off to his room, mostly because she can see just how desperately the poor boy needs to sleep. He’s out cold when she goes through to check on him, a slow tinny whistle pushing its way through his nose. It feels like yesterday that he was a tiny little kid with a blanket in one hand and his teddy bear in the other asking when mummy and daddy were coming home. She wishes she could protect him, keep him away from the cruel cruel world but there’s nothing she can do. She leaves Tylenol and cough syrup beside his bed and pulls the bed covers over his shivering frame. He turns over in his bed and winces just as she’s about to leave and then she’s stuck there, standing and watching him wishing she could take all the pain away.


	3. comfort

Ned arrives just as Peter is waking up. His senses are on high alert and everything hurts. Every bone, every muscle, every fibre of his being. He can hear the click of the door and Aunt May’s whisper as she lets him in. He buries his face into the pillow and listens.

“Pete texted me something about puppies and a life-size cardboard cut-out of The Hulk riding Iron Man thing last night,” he hears Ned say. “So either he was out partying or super high on cold medicine.”

“Bang on the money kiddo,” Aunt May sounds worried. “I got him to admit he was sick last night so I guess we’re making some progress.”

“Yeah, he wouldn’t really tell me much at school yesterday. Just that he had a fever because his ribs were still healing.”

Fuck. He hears Ned take a seat in the living room and Aunt May’s footsteps approaching. T-minus two seconds to steel himself and appear mostly human. Only problem is how decidedly unhuman he feels. His breathing is heavy and laboured and hard to carry out without a horrible crackly cough that nearly makes him gag. He manages to sit up and get down from his bed, but by the time May is by his door he’s sitting cross-legged on his computer chair, half-smiling (but also half-contorting-his-face-because-his-sinuses-feel-like-cement).

“How are you feeling Petey?” she smiles that nice friendly smile that makes him want to confess everything; how bad he truly feels and how he wishes the world could just stop because he hates feeling like this so much.

“Better than last night,” he shrugs.

Half true. At least he’s no longer high on cold medicine. That’s gotta count for something, right?

“Listen, I break bones on patrol all the time,” he sees Aunt May’s face contort at this; okay, so maybe that wasn’t the best thing to say when she’s already worried beyond belief. “I heal quickly. It’s a non-issue.”

“Sure doesn’t look like a non-issue.”

He wants to scream. It’s not like he can stop being Spider-Man, and it’s not like he can do it without ever sustaining an injury or tiring himself out but he can see in her face that it’s all she wants. For him to be safe and out of danger. Except here, outside of the suit he doesn’t feel safe. Not one bit. Everything’s too loud and bright and nothing makes sense. Nothing.

He nearly digs himself deeper into a hole by mentioning how this is just normal everyday friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man danger and he’s been through much worse on missions with Tony before he stops himself.

“Come on, kid,” she sighs, resigning herself to the fact that she can’t – and deep down, doesn’t want to – talk him out of doing what he does. “I think Ned’s nearly dying of excitement about meeting Stark in there. If you’re up for going you should get dressed before Happy gets here.”

He isn’t up for going. That becomes painfully clear when he nearly faints trying to get into his jeans. Ned basically has to carry him back through to the living room and once he reaches the couch he’s exploding in harsh coughs. May finds him a blanket and he keeps protesting that he’s fine but he’s shivering out of his skin. The only thing stopping her from preventing him from going to see Tony is the slim chance he may be able to make the kid feel better, and the fact the he will have Ned by his side to look out for him.

Happy’s call rings through and when Aunt May looks out of the window, he’s standing by the passenger side frowning. Peter doesn’t even notice. She guesses she should probably go down and speak to him.

“Mr Hogan?” she hesitates once she reaches the door; he is taken aback by the fact that it is her, not Peter calling his name.

“It’s Happy,” he furrows his brow. “The kid’s sick, isn’t he?”

“Not that he’d admit how sick he is but yes,” she sighs. “He is. You knew?”

“Lucky guess. He fell asleep in the lab with Tony the other day and Tony said his vitals in the suit have been haywire.”

“Stark knew didn’t he? That’s why he told Pete not to come in yesterday.”

“Don’t act like he’s doing something nice,” Happy laughs. “He’s just protecting himself from germs.”

“But wait,” May hesitates. “If you knew he was sick, why are you here to pick him up?”

“Stark may be selfish, but he’s also somehow a philanthropist. And he has a soft spot for the kid.”

“And so do you,” she smirks.

Ned brings Peter down in the lift. The blanket’s still around his shoulders and somehow, he looks worse in the morning light. Greyer. Deeper shadows under his eyes. His coughs cutting into the morning silence. The ride is slow as the time moves closer towards rush hour. Ned tries to keep talking, but Peter can barely reply. He leans his head against the window, pain spreading in a way it hasn’t before now. Piercing. Sharp. Agony.

“You’re not gonna puke in the car, are you?” Happy makes eye contact with him through the rear-view mirror.

“I’m good,” he grimaces back.

“Good, ‘cause you’re mopping it up if you do.”

Silence. Ned keeps watch over Peter, careful not to make small talk. Peter can barely handle the noise of the car moving.

“Happy?” he looks up, his bottom lip quivering. “Can you slow down a bit?”

“I’m not moving, kid. You want me to pull over? I can pull over. I’m pulling over, if you need me to.”

“I need…” he closes his eyes.

“Quiet I think,” Ned finishes the sentence for him. “His spidey senses are on full blast.”

They get there eventually. Happy calls ahead as Ned helps Peter out of the car, despite his insistence that he’s fine (almost immediately succeeded by his worst coughing fit to date). There’s a silent elevator journey and an awkward wait before Peter and Ned are sitting on the couch in the lab. Happy tells them Tony’s held up on a conference call and he’ll be ten minutes tops.”

“Sorry,” Peter mumbles.

“What for?” Ned shakes his head, trying to contain his grin. “This is awesome. We’re in Iron Man’s House!... Tower… Complex…. Thing. We’re going to meet Tony Stark! Iron Man!”

“Uh-huh,” Peter nods, mouth wide open, nearly asleep.

Everything hurts more now, like he’s being pumped through with poison. Sounds around him, too jumbled to discern. Bright lights. Itchy burning skin, somehow too warm and too cold all at once. His words aren’t really working; he can’t fully translate the tangled mess in his head into anything even resembling syntax. He wishes Tony would show up already. Time moves like tar. He feels something within him unhinge as the world swirls around him. All he can feel is pressure.

“Ned I…” he speaks before he even realises he’s saying anything. “I think I’m gonna…”

Except he doesn’t. He covers his mouth with his hand and Ned’s just thankful he’s stifling a scream instead of an explosion of vomit. It triggers his coughing and Ned finally hears just how bad the cough has gotten since yesterday. It’s like something’s tearing through his lungs trying to get out, but the worst part is how obvious it is that Peter’s in a lot of pain. He’s really not used to seeing Peter like this, at least not in recent years. He’s sat with him through asthma attacks, suffered through colds with him, talked him through getting motion sick on the bus on school trips (and of course, been there through everything that happened with Ben last year with him) but he’s never seen him this bad.

“Are you crying or is it just the coughing?” he rests his hand firmly on Peter’s back.

“I dunno,” Peter manages through a wheeze. “Both.”

“Is there anything I can do? Mr Stark should have Netflix? I can put on Netflix.”

“Feel like…,” words aren’t happening, “Gonna feel like this forever.”

“I know Pete, but Mr Stark’ll fix you up.”

“Wanna… Want it to…. I want… Not to feel bad.”

“I know, Pete. It’s okay.”

“T-thanks.”

The only vocabulary he has left is sorry, and all Ned can do is hold his hand and tell him it’s okay, that he’s going to feel better, that this isn’t forever even if it feels like it is. Peter’s crying now, his breathing hitching and rapid. Words are gone, they’re never coming back. God, he’s panicking Ned realises. He’s having a full-on panic attack.

“Suit…” he manages.

Fuck, Ned exhales. They left it back at the apartment in the rush.

“I’m sorry Pete, we left so quickly…” Ned tries to stay calm for Peter’s sake, but his voice is audibly wavering. “Would my headphones help?”

Peter gives a sheepish nod and gnaws at his lip. Ned fumbles to try and untangle the mess of wires wrapped around his phone.

Fluorescent light burns into his retinas and nothing makes sense. He sees colour and shape and shadows as separate things, objects as a series of lines, nothing is a coherent whole. There is the sound of scratchy static and his own heartbeat and Ned’s breathing and floorboards and wind and he has to cover his ears. He’s under rubble. He’s not strong enough to pull himself up. His chest feels like it’s collapsing in on itself. His lungs are no longer even lungs.

And then it’s quiet. Ned places the headphones in his ears for him and everything becomes muffled.

“Do you want me to play something, or do you just want to block out the noise?” he taps it out on his phone, so Peter doesn’t have to shy away from the sound of his voice, even though Ned’s whisper is about the only sound that comforts him right now.

He makes a gesture to say just to block out the noise and searches for Ned’s hand, for something to ground himself. Ned squeezes his fingers, reminds him he’s real. They stay like that for a while, Ned trying to keep his cool and Peter just trying to stay breathing.

He likes that Ned still hasn’t moved his hand from his and that he hasn’t asked him to tell him how he’s feeling. He’s just there and he’s his best friend, and that’s all he really needs.

“Time to fix up a Spider-Boy,” Tony emerges from the door, the sound of his voice exploding in Peter’s ear. “Man. I meant man… You’re sick, I’ve got to feed your ego.”

Ned wishes he could run up and shush the man but it’s Tony goddamn Stark. He can’t shush Iron Man. Peter pulls his hand from his and reluctantly pulls out the headphones, wincing as sound rushes back into his ears.

“Give me a symptom run down,” he still doesn’t notice just how much distress Peter is in. “I’m running a variance analysis on your suit’s data of your vitals over the past week, so we gotta kill some time.”

And the penny drops.

“Whoa,” he stops, lowering his voice and shifting to awkwardly make eye-contact with the sick kid. “You do not look good. At all. Like, at all.”

Peter just gives the most pathetic smile back at him. God, this is embarrassing. Stark can’t even keep eye-contact with him, shifting his glance to the tablet device – probably called something like a ‘Starkpad’ knowing Tony – in his hand as Peter’s eyes fill with tears again. Tony notices but clearly doesn’t know how to react; so he just doesn’t.

“Ned isn’t it?” Stark whispers, and it’d be exciting for Ned if it wasn’t under such dire circumstances. “Nice to finally meet you. Translate for him, I’m not fluent in sick-Spider-puppy and he’s not fluent in…. speaking right now.”

Ned looks to Peter, and then back at Mr Stark and then back at Peter again. Peter breaks the silence with a harsh cough that ends with a gag.

“Think that says it all really,” Ned gives a half-hearted laugh. “It’s worse today than it was yesterday, and that’s saying something. He was pretty bad in school yesterday.”

“Hm. I saw the readings from your suit. You patrolled feeling this sick?” Stark raises an eyebrow, Peter sheepishly nods in response. “D’you mind if I ask… why?”

“I uh…” Peter chews on his lip. “I just… Loud…. And bright, I guess. Karen… Suit lady… The AI… She has this sensory protocol.”

“So you kept on swinging your way through New York with… whatever this is because…”

“Everything’s just… A lot,” he meets Stark’s gaze. “Feels more normal when I’m Spider-Man.”

Tony doesn’t reply. He disappears for a while, returning with a variety of supplies. In the silence, Peter somehow ends up with an IV in his arm and Tony has tech running some sort of diagnostic on him before he’s dosing him with cough medicine and painkillers. Tony has what could only be considered negative bedside manner, treating Peter like he’s repairing a machine as opposed to a real live human being. Peter wouldn’t expect anything less.

“You have a chest infection that may or may not sound a little like pneumonia,” he states after a short interval, completely deadpan. “Oh and four broken ribs that haven’t healed. Or they have healed… And you broke them again. From coughing. And being Spider-Man. Oh, and being a dumbass. That too.”

“I have…” he stops to cough. “Super-spidey-coughs.”

“Yeah and we have a super-spidey dilemma.”

“Tell me the bad news Iron-Doc…” he closes his eyes, beginning to feel some relief from being hydrated and the meds.

“You have uh… Super-spidey bacteria.”

“Sounds…” his eyes go wide. “I don’t know. Weird… What does that mean?”

“The spider that bit you also gave all the bacteria that’s naturally in your body um… super-spidey powers, for lack of a better phrase.”

“So wait… What’s the problem? Are you saying I have a… super-spidey-chest-infection?”

“No, you have a… normal not-spidey chest infection albeit from hell, kid,” Tony shakes his head and laughs. “But I can’t give you antibiotics for it unless you want super-spidey MRSA or super-spidey C. Diff and want to risk starting a medical apocalypse of antibiotic resistant super-spidey-bugs.”

“Sounds… scary.”

“Yeah. It would be. We’re pretty fucked if this does turn into pneumonia or if you ever get sepsis so…” Tony waves his hand at him, a smirk on his face. “Don’t get sepsis.”

“I’ll try, Mr Stark.”

He watches as Stark stops to think, running through a series of pages quickly on his device. He chats away with F.R.I.D.A.Y about something, but Peter’s too tired to listen in. Ned rubs his back as he coughs, whispering a disgusted but empathetic ‘nasty’ when Peter has to spit a wad of green stuff into a tissue.

“Aish,” Tony fake-gags. “I could maybe wangle-jangle an antibiotic you could take. That’s… way beyond not healthy.”

“Couldn’t you like sa…” Peter stops, unable to finish as he’s overcome with another bout of coughing that leaves him wheezy and breathless.

“He uh,” Ned hesitates. “I think he was going to say couldn’t you save the world if you could do that?”

He stops and hesitates, pulling up a projection of a chemical composition for something. Peter blinks at the flurry of projected images that appear of DNA strands and immune cells and other science things he’s too sick to comprehend.

“I mean, if the world was made up of genetically enhanced Spidey-people,” he laughs. “It’d be pretty shitty… literally… figuratively… you catch my drift? I could sort this by tomorrow so take your vote. What’s that game you kids play? Would you rather? Deal with your lungs being a pile of shit for two weeks or two days of summoning Satan in your digestive tract?”

“Option one thanks,” he laughs.

“Smart choice. Mostly because it means less work for me.”

He pulls out the tablet again, tapping away.

“We can do… steroids, a decongestant… pizza? You’ll eat some pizza right?” Peter shakes response and Tony halts on finalising whatever it is he’s doing. “Soup then. And pizza for me. And donuts.”

Only minutes later, the supplies are hanging from a drone at the window and Tony makes him take the new medications before a blanket is finally sourced and a large projector screen lowers down from the ceiling, lighting up with a menu of movies and shows; no lighting up with a menu of every single movie and show that has ever existed.

“Please put on something sickeningly cheesy and bad, by all means,” Tony waves but he’s clearly distracted by something on his tablet. “As long as it’s not Star Wars.”

Peter keeps turning back to observe what Stark is doing. He’s still too alert and the tip-tap of his fingers against the screen keeps distracting him from the film.

All is revealed a few hours later, when Peter wakes up groggy from a nap to find Ned sleeping on the other side of the couch, the next film started and a wrapped package on the table in front of him as well as a note:

-Hey kid, try these. I got the data from your suit and put the sensory protocol into these headphones. They’re the most high-tech earplugs ever. They should be discrete enough to wear in school. There’s also tinted glasses in here, nothing too high-tech and definitely not very discrete unless you want to look like something from The Matrix but they work and will make you more comfortable. Get well soon, Spiderling. Tony. PS – stop making Happy have feelings, it’s terrifying.-

He has to resist the urge to cry. The headphones feel amazing and it’s the closest to normal he’s felt in a while. Even though he’s bone tired and heavy-chested, he sinks back into the couch and muses about how comfort settles gently within him, like he feels in the suit. Like he feels around Ned and MJ and May. God, maybe he does deserve this.


End file.
